After reading Joseph Gerth’s column on the Kentucky sales tax and the St. Jerome Church Picnic in Fancy Farm, I feel we need to consider another view on churches and taxes. Mr. Gerth fails to draw in my sympathies for what he views as an injustice because the scales are already tilted way in favor of churches. Let’s consider these facts.

Churches in the U.S. are privy to over 200 legal tax exemptions passed by Congress over many years. Churches pay no taxes on land or buildings. They pay no sales taxes. If they sell property, they pay no capital gains taxes. Church priests, ministers, rabbis etc. can exclude virtually all the costs of their home ownership from their taxable income, down to the cleaning supplies. In other words, churches, which own and cover a considerable portion of a community’s space, do not pay taxes despite the fact that they receive that community’s services.

Churches receive police and fire protection. They receive sewer and road services. In fact, any taxpayer-funded service in a community is afforded to churches even though they do not pay their share of any of it. It is up to the rest of us to pick up the tab for their share, which essentially makes everyone else pay much higher taxes. These tax benefits have caused the rise of megachurch buildings complete with gymnasiums and bowling alleys, and million dollar parsonages.

The Catholic Church is one of the top three real estate owners in the world, with an estimated 177 million acres of land. It includes over 26,000 properties in the U.S. and it is not all churches. This includes residential, commercial, parking lots, etc. The Archdiocese of Helena, Montana just sold 90 acres of land to be developed as a hotel/theater/restaurant/shopping mall. It is estimated that the loss of tax revenue as a direct result of these exemptions costs U.S. taxpayers $80 billion a year.

Mr. Gerth points to the bingo tax as being an injustice because the money goes to Catholic-run charities. Well, we’d have to follow each dollar to see where it really goes, but we can’t because the church doesn’t have to report to any outside authorities as to how money is spent, even if it is government money. Those bingo proceeds could easily become part of the $2 million the church spent in New York to lobby against a bill that would make it easier for victims of child sex abuse to sue their attackers.

In 2016 Health and Human Services granted $1.6 billion to Catholic charities. Over 60 percent of Catholic charities are funded by taxpayer monies in the form of grants and contracts for services. On top of that, the church is allowed to discriminate using our tax dollars by denying gay couples adoption services, or blocking family planning services to immigrant women. Catholic-owned hospitals take in billions of dollars of taxpayer monies and yet are allowed to block legal medical services and medications to women (and men) all over the country. On top of all this, these charities (and this goes for all church-run charities) are allowed to use our tax dollars to proselytize people who come to them in need.

The picnic at Fancy Farm is an event that should make anyone uncomfortable who is concerned about the corruption that inevitably occurs when church and state cozy up to each other. It is just the kind of church/state entanglement that our founders worried about and tried to address in our Constitution. Putting that aside, I must say that because it is my tax dollars that are going towards propping up religion and religious institutions in this country, it is I who am experiencing an injustice. My religious freedom to be free from being forced to pay for religious ideas and institutions is being violated all the time.

So I hope that Mr. Gerth will understand why I don’t give a hoot about the boo-hooing over a tax on a church’s bingo game. In fact, I hope it is a start towards an end to government welfare for churches and other religious institutions.